 Why is Boba such a symbol for Asians in America, whether it's hanging out at the Boba shop, living that Boba life, or it's the politicized term, Boba liberal. Is there too much Boba in our lives, or is there not enough? Yeah man, we gotta talk about it because anything related to the term Boba or bubble tea just has a very high likelihood of going viral within the Asian American internet circles. Recently, this Singaporean kid, Andrew, took advantage of a new Boba shops, like $1 unlimited opening, and he brought like a one gallon glass, and just that went viral, and I was just like, yo man, anything with Boba can go viral in the Asian world, whether we're talking about the product or the political identity. All right, so actually in this video, we're gonna be talking about both. All right, we'll give you a quick background on where Boba the drink is headed right now, and then also where the term Boba liberal, which is a political term, used to describe a certain group of Asians in America, where that stands and kind of like where it's been going for the past few years. But anyways, guys, if you're interested in this Boba video, please hit that like button, check out other episodes of the Hot Pop Boys. Real quick, man, we gotta talk about the actual product itself, Andrew, that became this word, and became this thing way beyond the drink. I mean, we're talking about a $5 billion market cap right now and growing. So Boba is definitely growing, and it is hitting non-Asian markets, but there's different levels of Boba, David. Yeah, there's chains from Taiwan. They're normally like $8, I wanna say they're higher end. Then there's cheaper chains from the old days, your lollipop, your tap-exes, kung fu teas. What are they, like five bucks? They're almost like dying out in the Asian areas because they're getting eaten up by the cooler, more expensive spots, but they're moving to non-Asian areas. Right. David, did you ever think you would walk into a Xingfu Tong, which is a brand from Taiwan, and be like, yeah, I'd like to get the brown sugar milk Boba, and then they're like, yeah, do you want a gold flake on top? And then you're like, yeah. And then they're like, yeah, okay, that's gonna be 1540 after Tex and Tim. I'm like, holy shoot. Man, honestly, I think we're headed towards a $25 Boba. Like just like alcoholic drinks, why not? I mean, it depends on what they put in there. There's also Southeast Asian Boba shops. There's Teguc, which is from Indonesia. There's Vietnamese ones like Che, Seven Leaves. Vietnamese also own Tasty, which is like half juice bar, half Boba shop. And something I never thought I'd see is a South Asian Boba shop, a Bengali-owned one over in New York serving Kulfi. Like it's like the Indian, kind of the South Asian ice cream inside of Boba. You see it kind of going out of the Sino sphere, right? Like not just Taiwanese, Chinese, Sino things. There's also third wave coffee shop Boba, which is almost like a blue bottle, which is more like Boba guys or Haiti. This is a really interesting space because there's all these like cool books and hipster artwork and hipster music being played at all these spots. And the build outs are expensive. Yeah, I would say Phil Wings, Bo Bo Bo 4 is more falling into that category. It's almost like a hybrid of that and something else. Somebody said, you know, what are the biggest issues facing Boba though? Some people said, I think it's overrated. It's played out by now. Boba's already been out for 20 years. I had enough. No, I think they're just graduating. I think Boba obviously has a ways to go, but it's gonna morph and adapt because it's just gonna evolve. Boba can just adapt to all environments, to all flavors. You're saying as long as Boba keeps evolving and changing and like becoming more expensive with more cooler ingredients and more higher quality, it'll never get played out. Just a style of Boba might, but not Boba as a genre. Boba is not going away. It is reaching staple like luxury drink tier, AKA dessert tier. But what about non Asians? Because I would say a lot of older non Asians in America have still never had Boba or maybe they've had it one time at a cheap spot. Like, you know, I think younger people, everybody might have tried it more, but like for sure older people, a lot of other races that are not Asian have never had it. Dude, if you're a 20 year old non Asian, especially like living sort of around any sort of Asians, trust me, you've had Boba. And I think that as Boba shops get nicer, that's going to attract other people too. Just as the cheap Boba is for everybody as well. But I would say one thing is interesting is that a lot of people tried to do alcoholic Boba and it hasn't really taken off. There's still people trying, but nothing has made sense like the espresso martini. Right. Because that just makes sense. Yeah, I mean, if it took the espresso martini, like let's just say a hundred years to get popular, how long is it going to take for alcoholic Boba to work? And I think that's because alcoholic Boba has such a wholesome family friendly third place for like AAPIs to be like somewhat wholesome. I know there was some AZN gang stuff that went around, went down around tap X's back in the day, but you don't expect that to happen outside of the Boba guys. I will say this, David, I think people who drink a lot of Boba probably drink and consume less alcohol than the average person who drinks a lot of coffee. Okay, yeah. Yeah, because it's not a stimulant. Yeah, Boba is still not that lit. Tea has a little bit of caffeine, but if you take the tea out and you're just drinking brown sugar milk tea with taro on top, then there's no like energy involved in that. You're just, you're drinking a dessert. Right, but Elenium and modern day Boba shops definitely go together, EDM. That's how I- I see a lot of people selling Coachella EDM festival tickets at Boba shops. There will definitely be Boba trucks at Coachella, no doubt. Moving on to the more complicated topic, which I guess is more modern. It's hotter in terms of SEO. We're talking about the term Boba liberal. We made a whole video about it. We broke down the difference between an intersectional Asian, a Boba liberal and a AZN nationalist. This is of course three Asian specific political identities. Most Asians, of course, as we know are not even political at all, probably completely unaware of this whole spectrum. But why is it just, it's just been a topic that has kept on rolling. But lately I want to say the tide has turned against the Boba liberal and there's a lot more think pieces coming out against the Boba liberal, which by the way real quick, just to give a quick definition, it's almost like a latte liberal or a limousine liberal, but with more Asian characteristics. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, it's funny because Boba as a drink and a product, most people don't have a problem with it. If not, they love it, but Boba liberal has kind of a negative connotation. You know what they say? Full of calories, sweet and generally lacking in substance, the Boba liberal. Yeah, and also I think that, I guess there's a belief that being a Boba liberal hasn't really helped Asians that much in what they value. Like it might have helped some Asians, but this article right here that this guy wrote and this is kind of to be honest, and I'll frame it, it is negative towards Boba liberals by the way guys. So it is, he has a direction with it. Right, it's called the real white adjacent Asians. Yeah. What's a quote from it though? And I'm not saying we agree with it, but you guys let us know in the comments down below what you think. Well, basically it's saying that like some Boba liberals use ideology from white people to rise up the white people ladder while throwing the actual Asian community, particularly working class Asians under the bus to basically like be like, oh yeah, Asians are this, Asians are that, and people are like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like who are you to speak for us? You went to like liberal arts college and it was paid for by your parents. Somebody said the truth is some Asians really do believe they are in fact white. Based on their own definition of whiteness. Asian Americans swell the ranks of highly selective colleges, the breeding grounds for the ideology of the liberal elite, the class that dominates the media and the academy, the liberal who goes to Bowdoin or Brown sees the displays of white, sees that displays of white guilt are in vogue and apes white liberal guilt creating a twisted Asian guilt. The Asian guilt is the interesting thing. I'm not really sure where that comes from and how you justify that. But I will say this, I have no problem with liberal views because I believe in a lot of them, but I will say this, elites of both groups and elites is the keyword. They're kind of messing it up for a lot of people. So anytime that an Asian feels like they become an elite of any group, whether it's the right side or the left side, I think they're starting to disconnect themselves from 95, 98% of Asians. The everyday experiences of the vast majority of the bulk distribution of the population. 100%. Somebody said, you know what the biggest problem with Boba Liberals is? Not that they exist, but that they take up all the media and journalism jobs and end up representing our community in a disproportionate way to the outside world. And I think that this is generally true because if you think about who can write really well sounding and colorful articles with using large vocabulary, it's probably people who went to good schools. Right. And probably upper middle class kids who went to liberal arts colleges because that's not necessarily what a STEM degree teaches you to do. You're more likely to write like a scientific thing. I mean, think about it. A lot of Asians from the middle class or lower middle class, when they do get a chance to go to college, they're probably going to go into something usually a little bit more practical to get a job. So whether that's engineering or nursing or medical or whatever like some sort of corporate ladder type thing. Yeah. So you can get hired at a job and then like survive and support your family typically. Right. Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, some people, we work in media. So I'm coming across this person quite often. But obviously what's very different about our upbringing is that we were raised around a lot of working class Asian Americans, a lot of refugee people from refugee families. So definitely we have a lot of different perspectives that are probably, I guess, a stereotypical Boba liberal would not have. Why do you think that like the media loves picking a certain group from a community and saying you're going to represent for the whole group? For example, Andrew, I would say maybe in the African American community, the media world might say we only want to hear hood stories. We get that you guys have a lot of other stories but that's what I want to buy. And then from the Latino community, they're like, I want to buy immigration and Dream Act stories from even white people. They're like, let me buy like rich bratty, like preppy sort of, you know, legally blonde type stories. And then from Asians, let me buy these Boba liberal stories from the Asian American community. That's what the game has said. Even though we know that your guys' community is multifaceted with many different pie slices, that's the only pie slice that I care about. Oh, that's the only pie slice that I find interesting. You're either, it's either struggle pornography or it's crazy rich Asians, you know? Those are the only two types of Asians I know. But because to be honest, and this is the honest truth, it kind of hurts for a lot of people, is that stereotype sell. They sell, like we want to watch them because they also reconfirm what we thought in person, but also they can kind of make for interesting stories. Obviously, we have black friends who are like, yo man, I don't know if I need to watch another like movie about slavery. Like I don't need it. I don't need it, right? It's like, because it is, there's stories in it, right? So I think that part of the problem is that there just needs to be more different levels of stories that can break the stereotypes. And that's where, but it goes back to the writers because people need to write these scripts and write these stories. But who can write the scripts and stories? Oftentimes people who are kind of, you know, went to really good schools. And this sort of goes on to our final takeaways about Boba Liberals. Like Boba Liberals are absolutely entitled to their opinion. They don't live their life. They have their own reps. They've seen their own life experiences. But for people who don't share those same perspectives or share those perspectives, but expanded, they got to break into media. Even though it's true that when you go for a media career, it's tough because it could work or it could not work. That's the tough part about it. A STEM job, generally, if you work at it, it's guaranteed to work to some level. Media career is 50-50. You don't really know. You could try your hardest and have it still go downside. You know what to me and what I love about the discourse that Asians are having online, even though I generally don't like trying to solve things in the comment section. I don't believe in it. But what I do think has been helping a lot are like these Asian organizations, whether it's like TAF, like the Asian American Foundation, or whatever it is that are funded by rich Asians. But they basically survey Asians to get an accurate read on how actual Asians feel. So they're not surveying just a certain group of Asians, but they're trying to get stats that kind of represent the whole of Asians. So now when we see these stats, they're a little bit more accurate. They're never 100% because it's just surveys and whatever. But they give you a better read about how the general Asian feels. Are you trying to say that Sandy Liang from Wesleyan does not represent every single Asian ever? No, that's what the thing is about writing. Now, here's the thing. I love, we also create media. So we're content creators, just like writers are content creators. So of course there is a level of like, you want to talk about things that gets views. You want to say things. You want to drop bars. You want some banger hits. You want a chart on the billboard charts. You want to have that one liner that can go viral in that headline. Right, because that's how you have a career and a lot of people in the media career, they thrive off magnetism and drawing eyeballs in gravity. But living that life is like, you're kind of somewhat chasing clout or views to an extent. So what I like about the surveys and all these statistics is that they're just calling them up or asking them online, you know how you feel about this and there's no clout or fame that you can gain from being part of a survey. So that's why the regular average Asian more participates in that. And that's why I like those stats because it gives a real reading. Not just one person's voice. Yeah, so I guess the future of the Boba liberal might be at a Boba shop, but also with more diverse opinions than the version 1.0 has. Who knows? The version 2.0, you see more about life. You see more of the gray zones and the layered and the complexities. Of course, you can still have your own opinions. Let us know what you think in the comments section below. What is the future of real Boba? What is the future of Boba liberals? And why does everything Asian-American have the word Boba attached to it? It just seems like it just goes together. Boba life, this is Boba life. Let us know what you think in the comments section below. Until next time, we're gonna hop on boys, we out. Peace.